


Sleep

by Deepdarkwaters



Series: Bespoke [7]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Exhaustion, Injury Recovery, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 12:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7360777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eggsy and Merlin exhaust themselves cleaning up the world after V-Day. Harry sleeps. And sleeps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VioletSmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletSmith/gifts).



He'd never be shitty and thoughtless enough to say he's glad for the fucked state of the world now, but Eggsy's glad at least for the distraction. For a little while people manage to pull together – cleaning up the mess of trashed buildings, endless volunteers to donate blood and help out in hospitals – but the chaos is a long time settling, and before long all the same old monsters surface again to snatch at the opportunity to hit people when they're down.

Outside Minsk, he and Bedivere blow up a warehouse full of those dodgy sim cards. Quite exciting, his first real explosion. Bedivere side-eyes him when he mentions it, asks if he's forgotten the V-Day fireworks already, and Eggsy's quiet the rest of the way home because yes, actually, and no. Never forgotten, but folded into bubble wrap and stored away safely somewhere in his mind so he can get on with the next job. Besides, the heads were little firecrackers compared to this fucking huge Michael Bay beauty of a bomb, the flames that lick up into the air seeming somehow unreal against the blue of the sky, like bad CGI.

In Bogota, he and Lancelot follow a frustrating, meandering trail of half-clues until they find themselves on the highway speeding after a van full of V-Day orphans on their way to god knows what kind of hell. The steering wheel thrums under his hands as he tries to keep the car steady so Lancelot can calmly shoot out the van driver's window, leap from her own to his, and politely offer the guy a couple of bullets to the kneecaps until he agrees it might be best for everyone involved if he moves across to the passenger side and lets her take over.

There's a bank robbery he ignores in Paris. Not his problem; besides, all the yelling and police sirens are a good cover for the assassination. He takes aim through the open balcony doors from a rooftop opposite, breathes out slowly, and shoots the guy neatly between the eyebrows. Doesn't know who he is or what he's done. Doesn't care. He needs to be in Johannesburg in eleven hours, Buenos Aires sixteen hours after that.

Tokyo an endless week later is another quick one, a last resort shot to the head after whatever negotiations they'd tried before failed – or at least it should be.

"Gawain?" his handler prompts in his earpiece.

"Yeah, gimme a sec."

His hands are shaking. That's a new one.

He'd laughed at Roxy when she'd asked him to come to yoga classes, called it hippy rubbish. Wouldn't listen when she tried to tell him how much it helped her manage everything – the exhaustion, the killing, the highs and crashes of brain chemicals that are as much a part of this job as the incredible pension if you live long enough to need it. Wonders now whether there might be something in it after all.

"Lose your opportunity if you wait much longer, sir."

"Yeah, I said gimme a second, alright?"

He scrubs his sweating palms on his trousers one by one to blot them dry. The rifle feels cool against his skin when he puts them back there, lining up the shot. Trying to line up the shot. He's shaking again.

"Abort," Merlin says in his ear, quiet and commanding, and Eggsy takes his hands off his rifle again, twists his fingers together, and tries to force them steady through willpower.

"Where's Laila?"

"I'm taking over. Abort mission. Better to leave it than botch it."

"Are you mental, I ain't leaving this—"

"Gawain." There's no arguing with that tone. It's even worse than the take-that-chip-off-your-shoulder voice; this is the gentle, careful I-hope-you-know-you-can-talk-to-me voice that Eggsy's not heard Merlin use on him since the day Harry was brought off the plane and tucked into a bed in the hospital wing surrounded by all sorts of machines and worrying paper charts. "I can knock you out remotely. Please don't make me do that."

Can he? Bullshit. Bullshit, right?

"Fuck off, no you can't." He tries to sound cocky but just sounds shattered.

"Are you going to risk it?"

"Aborted," Eggsy says grudgingly, and slumps against the wall with his fingers – still fucking trembling, what the fuck – twisted into his hair, palms squeezing his forehead like he'll be able to fend off the approaching ache there by pressure. For a fleeting, horrifying moment he feels like he might cry, some awful combination of rage and shame, this growing anxiety about being a disappointment to the medal he still wears under his smart suits and everything it stands for. It passes. Now he just wants to sleep. "Merlin, I'm really sorry."

"No need for that. Our fault for overworking you. I'm sorry, Eggsy, I know it's not been easy."

"No, don't—" He stops, unsure how to word what he's trying to say. _Don't you say sorry to me when I'm the fuck up. Don't make me stop. Please please god don't think I can't do this, I'll show you I can._

"On the plane. Straight to sleep. You've got three days off, then we'll try again."

Three days might as well be six weeks, like the magical stretch of summer holiday in junior school. The first of them passes him by completely, sleeping for a solid fourteen hours and then on and off for another eight, not wanting to leave the cocoon of blankets in the suite he's been given at HQ. He starts to ring his mum when he feels alive again, then puts his phone away when he notices it's almost three in the morning. He's been hopping time zones for so long he feels lost, like he's fumbled his grip on the world and he's flying off into space.

He heads down to the tea room and pours about two pints of milk and enough Cheerios for four people into one of the huge bowls the handlers use for popcorn. Best meal of his life. Tips the bowl up to drink the crummy dregs of at the bottom when he's done. Doesn't care that Bors shoots him a dirty look from the coffee pot – even does a huge milky burp at him to wind him up even more, because Bors is a bit of a prick, really.

Eggsy has every intention of going back to his rooms to sleep a bit more, or maybe get some training clothes on instead of his fancy green silk pyjamas and go for a run around the grounds, but it's inevitable, really, that he ends up in the hospital. He can't even remember the last time he got a chance to visit Harry; he's barely been back to HQ at all in weeks, cramming debriefs in over his tablet during plane trips between jobs, patching his own injuries with whatever he can find in the first aid kits. The thought that Harry's still unconscious after this long is unnerving. It's not been as long as it was during training, but still... how many times can a bloke go into a months-long coma from a head injury and still come out normal on the other end?

The hospital wing is quiet, the creepy sort of silence you get when you can't see anybody around but you can hear the faint murmur of voices somewhere. Eggsy gives a thumbs up to the nurse on duty when he turns the corner and sees her talking on the phone behind her desk, and she returns a grin and a little wave, briefly covering the mouthpiece with her hand so she can say, "No change, sir, but go in if you want."

Maybe she's not aware that Merlin's already in there. Eggsy jumps when he sees the unexpected movement in the corner, whirls round to see Merlin lit in the blueish glow from a monitor.

"Nearly gave me a fucking heart attack, bruv!"

"Well, you're in the right place for it," Merlin says, giving him a crooked little smile. He looks knackered. His glasses are shoved up to rest on top of his head and, undisguised, the dark circles beneath his eyes look as heavy as bruises, like he's been punched. "Sleep well?"

"Like the—"

 _Dead. Like the dead. Fucking hell, Eggsy, you stupid prick._ He glances at Harry, starts to apologise, but Merlin's smile goes softer somehow.

"Like the dead. Good. You sounded like you needed it."

He cocks his head at the other armchair by Harry's bedside and Eggsy curls up in it, chilled bare feet tucked under himself. He hardly dares to look, but eventually makes himself – and Harry looks fine. Just like normal, like Harry. The lacerations from the shattered glasses – because even bulletproof lenses aren't going to hold completely at point blank range – have faded to a spiderweb graze, it probably won't even scar much. The real damage is something far beyond Eggsy's understanding, something that can only be explained in long medical terms for various bits of the brain and the damage caused to them by a heavy backwards fall.

"Can we get a barber in to sort his hair out?" Eggsy asks quietly. He resists the urge to touch. It looks soft and clean – the nurses must be washing it for him – but the length is weird, wrong. It looks untidy. Harry would hate it, he thinks. "Shave that beard off him."

He can almost feel Merlin's eyes on him, studying him. "Of course, if it'll make you feel better. I'll call someone in the morning."

"I just. I think Harry wouldn't like it."

"Observation noted." Merlin actually laughs then, just a tiny little amused breath out. "He had the worst moustache I've ever seen in my life about twenty years ago."

"What?" Eggsy's trying to picture it but it's impossible, even when he reaches over the bed to cover Harry's chin with his hand to get a sense of it. "What the fuck for, like a disguise?"

"No, he thought it suited him."

Eggsy was reading Spot the Dog books twenty years ago. Playing football out on the park with his mum, helping his dad build Lego models. It strikes him again, for the millionth time, how little he really knows about Harry, except that he's spent more than the entire span of Eggsy's lifetime trying to save a world that will never know it owes him thanks.

"Aint you got an office?" he asks Merlin instead, thinking a topic-change might make the inside of his head feel slightly less like someone's scrubbing a cheese grater against it. Eggsy knows he's got an office, and a dozen more work stations dotted randomly around HQ and the shop so he can tap into whatever's going on no matter where in the building he is. "How come you're in here?"

"It's quiet in here." He's not wrong. The low hospital-sounds of the machines and the nurse's quiet voice outside are almost soporific, like the white noise Roxy listens to on headphones when she's trying to sleep. "It's only at night. Some nights. This place won't run itself, it's business as usual during the day."

"Nagging me to sleep, _you_ should sleep. You look like a fucking ghost, bruv, when's the last time you had some proper kip?"

Merlin just shrugs. "I've never been much of a sleeper. I'm fine."

"Lucky I ain't got my watch on. Feel like I should dart you in the neck for your own good."

"You wouldn't dare." Not wrong about that either. Merlin's a bit amazing, and for a while now Eggsy's been teetering on this weird, wonderful line between thinking of him as a friend and not being sure he's allowed to, but that doesn't make him any less terrifying when he does that cold thing with his eyes and that soft thing with his voice.

"No I fucking wouldn't." Not that giving up is an acceptable option either, not when Merlin looks like the walking dead. "Alright then, can I do anything? Like, _anything_? You want coffee or something?" Hesitates, not sure whether it's rude or whatever, then says it anyway as Merlin stifles a wide, noisy yawn against the back of his hand. "Ain't gonna lie, you look like shit. When's the last time you went home? You want me to get you a change of clothes or something?"

"Oh," Merlin says in a strange sort of tone, like he's never even considered the possibility of _not_ wearing the same two jumpers on alternating days for the rest of his life. "Would you?"

"Yeah. Course. Gimme your keys and alarm code and shit, I'm gonna see my mum in a bit so I'll fetch some stuff after. And text me your address."

"Stanhope Mews." Merlin's scrubbing his eyes with his fingertips like he can physically expel the tiredness using force. "Little house at the end with the balcony. I believe you already know how to get there."

And Eggsy echoes his _oh_ , the sudden penny drop feeling like a crashing cartoon anvil.

"Mine's the wardrobe nearest the window."

"Yeah. Alright. Yeah."

Quietly Merlin adds, "Could you bring the book from the bedside table?"

"Yeah. I— yeah. No problem."

"Reading to him never helped before, but it can't hurt."

"I didn't know," Eggsy says desperately. "Fuck. I'm sorry. You coulda told me, I wouldn't've been such a fucking useless moping prick over him if I known."

Then Merlin drops his glasses back over his eyes and looks at him, amused little smile just touching the corners of his mouth. "Yes you would."

No arguing with that, really. Yes, he would.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day Harry wakes, Merlin is running Eggsy through an intricate mission in Tokyo and everything's just gone wrong. Things are exploding left and right, Eggsy's clinging to life by one hand having just been shoved off a roof fifty-some floors up, and Merlin forces himself to ignore the alert from medical that flashes on his glasses because it feels like some fucked-up system of fate has decided Eggsy's life is what's to be exchanged for Harry's and that's absolutely not going to happen today, or ever.

"Quiet in here," Eggsy mutters one day. On some level Merlin registers that he's spoken, but he's reading and the words don't coalesce into meaning in his head until a few minutes later when he finishes his chapter.

"Yes," he says, closing his book but keeping his finger between the pages to mark his place. "Hospitals generally are."

"Freaks me out a bit. Swear down I can hear my own blood pumping."

Merlin almost wants to say _well then stop spending all your downtime here and go home_ , but he doesn't. There's something unexpectedly pleasant about having company for a change - at least there's a nucleus of pleasure somewhere in the middle of everything else he's painstakingly working through in his head, and that seems like enough to let things be for now.

Later, when Eggsy's left for his Lima mission, Merlin remembers what he said and scrapes his chair closer to the bed, leans over at an uncomfortable angle to rest his ear against Harry's rising-falling chest, and listens for hours to the thudding strength of his indomitable heart.

* * *

Nine days later he signs off his shift and takes his paperwork to the silence of Harry's room as usual, but today it's not silent. Today Eggsy's sitting there with a clipboard and fountain pen, filling out report forms and bobbing his head to the music coming from an iPhone in a new speaker dock on the bedside table.

"Explain," Merlin says as he takes his own seat.

He's not been a field agent for two decades but his reflexes are still as whip-fast as ever, and he grabs the wrapped sandwich Eggsy throws at him out of the air when it's an inch away from hitting his nose.

"I know you ain't eating properly. Get some steak and veggies in you, you can't live off fucking Pot Noodles forever. Coming from _me_ so you know it's serious."

"Thank you."

Eggsy doesn't look up but he smiles faintly, seeming relieved that Merlin hasn't lobbed the sandwich back at him and told him to get out. "I know there's classified shit on that phone but I ain't looked at nothing, just his Spotify." It's Harry's phone, Merlin realises when he glances over again, and therefore one of Harry's atrocious playlists full of a nasty cocktail of boy bands and rap and histrionic rock power ballads - indeed, just then the last track ends and the new one blares into life, and Eggsy pulls a face Merlin is fairly sure he's also wearing on his own. "Who's this?"

"Air Supply. A bit before your time. Before your birth, in fact," he adds slightly ruefully, and Eggsy grins.

"What's that supposed to mean? Young whelp like me ain't allowed to listen to nothing before this century? Cos if that's the case it goes both ways and Harry's got fucking Lil Wayne on this playlist, explain _that_."

"I wish I could."

"And Backstreet Boys."

"He fancied the blond one in the nineties."

"Fucksake, Harry." He says it quietly, fondly, a little bit wistfully. Eggsy's something fairly close to a miracle worker out on missions, like some kind of flawlessly programmed robot, but within these walls when it's just the two of them - three of them, with Harry - he never tries to hide anything he's feeling. Merlin wonders whether he even realises he's doing it. Probably not. His full and absolute hero worship of Harry has never been a secret from anyone, including Harry himself, but that's not where it ends. It can't be, not with the way Eggsy sits here for hours on end just waiting for something to change.

* * *

Merlin's reading in the corner, so exhausted from week one of training the new recruits that the print is starting to look fuzzy, and Eggsy's in his usual chair by the bed, marking some multiple choice tests the group finished earlier. Harry lies motionless between them, breathing steadily and monitored by quietly humming machines, and his ghastly playlist continues on endless repeating shuffle, farting offensive sounds out into the hush of the room - Michael Ball and Drake and Dolly Parton and McFly and Nine Inch Nails and some particularly whiny Morrissey, and now fucking Barbra Streisand, as if Merlin's not already having the worst year of his life.

"When eyes meet eyes and the feeling is strong," Eggsy sings, half under his breath. Merlin stares at him. He's scanning the test answers, he doesn't seem aware he's warbling along with the song. "I turn away from the wall, I stumble and fall, but I give you it all, I am a woman in love..."

"I wouldn't buy your album," Merlin comments, "but if you came on in the car I might not change the station."

Eggsy looks up at him for a moment, then his face twists into a fairly accurate copy of that cringey emoji he uses in his texts instead of punctuation. "Was I singing out loud?"

Merlin nods.

"Oh fuck, sorry." He doesn't sound sorry - a bit embarrassed, but sort of laughing at himself as he goes back to the test papers. "My mum used to sing in pubs and clubs and stuff, she was alright. Like she probably wouldn't get past X Factor boot camp or nothing but she can carry a tune, she was good at it. We used to put her tapes on at home so she could practice and I'd be helping with the washing up or whatever both of us just singing our arses off. Fucking awful bullshit but, you know. Gets stuck in your head." A frown flickers onto his face and back off again. "Dean made her stop. Didn't want other men looking at her. Didn't want her having her own money or nothing, she had to ask him for everything."

Merlin stays silent, just studies Eggsy over the top of his book. It doesn't feel like a conversation, it feels like Eggsy's shaken something loose at last and wants to spit it out.

"Sometimes I wanna hack into records or whatever and see if he's got shanked yet cos you fucking _know_ that prick ain't the big dog no more in there. But then I don't wanna give him no more of my time." Another long silence, during which Barbra finally shuts up and is replaced by Return Of The Mack. "You think Harry would be pissed I stole his best line when I broke Dean's face that time?"

"You can ask him when he wakes up," Merlin says, and Eggsy goes back to his marking with a tiny smile on his face.

* * *

The day Harry wakes, Merlin is running Eggsy through an intricate mission in Tokyo and everything's just gone wrong. Things are exploding left and right, Eggsy's clinging to life by one hand having just been shoved off a roof fifty-some floors up, and Merlin forces himself to ignore the alert from medical that just flashed on his glasses because it feels like some fucked-up system of fate has decided Eggsy's life is what's to be exchanged for Harry's and that's absolutely not going to happen today, or ever.

"Focus, Gawain," he says calmly, needing Eggsy to stop flailing. "There's a ledge eight feet below. If you drop to it you can cut through the window and get back inside, but it's narrow - if you overbalance you're a goner."

"How narrow?"

"Two feet."

"Oh come on, I thought you meant like four inches or something." He lands neatly with impeccable poise and stands bracing one hand on the side wall as he grabs a multitool out of his pocket and starts slicing through the glass, punching it through and doing an entirely unnecessary roll into the office room because he watches far too many Steven Seagal films. "Once more unto the breach and all that. How many we got left?"

"Nine."

"Easy, I got this."

Merlin re-routes Eggsy's path back to the control room of the building, and round two begins.

More than four hours later, it ends.

"I fucking love saving the world," Eggsy says. He's lying flat on his back on the half-exploded roof waiting for his helicopter, staring up at the sky where there'd be stars on show if not for all the light pollution. Even at gone three in the morning it doesn't look completely like it's night - when Eggsy takes his glasses off and flips them in his hand so Merlin can see his face and his thumbs up and his tired grin on the camera feed, there seems to be a soft-focus neon sort of glow about him. He looks more like himself without his glasses. In them, in character as Gawain and his numerous aliases, he looks so much like Harry that Merlin sometimes feels like he's seeing a ghost when they meet in the mansion corridors. "Thought I might stay on a bit for my R&R if that's alright. I been here like three times now chasing people down but I never done all the tourist shit."

"Of course," Merlin says, "but Harry's awake."

Eggsy's got his glasses back on so Merlin can't see his face, but he can hear the shocked sucked-in breath. "When?"

"When you were dangling fifty floors off the ground."

"What, you ain't seen him yet?"

"I was in the middle of something fairly important at the time."

"Fucksake, _go_!"

He goes, but there's not much he can do. Even as the acting boss of the entire organisation, the medical staff outrank him here and he's firmly asked to wait outside until they've finished a million and one maddeningly slow checks and tests. When he's finally allowed in, Harry's asleep again and it's almost as though nothing's changed at all.

Merlin takes his usual seat, opens his book, and reads the same few lines over and over without taking them in until he falls feverishly asleep.

* * *

He wakes to movement, Harry's fingers curling around his, tickling his palm.

"Hello," Merlin says, scratchy and hoarse from sleep. All this time, like almost every time before, he's been bracing himself for lasting damage because even Harry Hart's luck can't hold out forever, but Harry's smile is exactly the same as it always was: slightly ridiculous, utterly gorgeous, rearranging his entire handsome face into creases and dimples.

"Hello."

"Do you know your name?"

"Harry Hart. Galahad."

"Do you know mine?"

"Mark Hart. Merlin."

A long, shuddering breath out, and Merlin holds desperately tightly to Harry's hand when he feels the weak squeeze of his fingers again. "Good. Welcome back, sir."

Out in the corridor he can hear sudden raised voices, and though he can't make out the words he's fairly sure from the outraged tones that it's Eggsy demanding to be allowed in and the nurses telling him no. Harry hears it too, tries to raise his head off the pillow until Merlin begins stroking his hair to make him settle.

"Shush."

"Is that Eggsy? Please tell him how much I regret--"

"Tell him yourself. Do you really think they're going to stop him coming in? He'll crawl through the air vent if he has to."

"Is he an agent now?"

"Yes. He's Gawain."

"Gawain," Harry repeats softly. He's falling asleep again, eyelids drooping and words turning slurred. "Like you."

He's handsome like Harry, and cheeky and rude and charming and quick and clever, but when Merlin goes to the door and sees Eggsy arguing like a devil with the nurse and demanding to be allowed to be with Harry, he thinks that in this, at least, there are no two people more alike in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Samantha Womack who played Michelle entered Eurovision for us in 1991 with the actual worst song of all time. Enjoy!!! https://youtu.be/BR0ukZAJDqM


End file.
